13. Now I cannot, by any sort of indulgence, pretend that the climb we made on the following day was in any way exceptional. Many people have done it before and are still doing it. Miss Donisthorpe during her three months research on the gorillas used to make the ascent almost every day. I merely wish to record that for any middle-aged person of sedentary habits it is a considerable ordeal, and that only a sort of vanity or pig-headedness will keep him going; having once embarked on this enterprise he will feel no doubt, as I did, that he must keep on. A curious optimism intervenes; suddenly it becomes not only possible but imperative to clamber up every new height which would have seemed impossible at the outset of the journey. Having never given wild gorillas more than a passing thought in my life before, it now became absolutely essential that I Should see one.
     14. Our two guides turned out to be thin little Africans wearing battered suits and hats and anything less like mountaineers could hardly have been imagined. In point of fact, as we soon discovered, they, were experts with hypersensitive powers of sight and smell and hearing. They were as indefatigable as the gorilla himself, and like all highly-trained trackers they appeared to feel their way through the bush as though they were moved by some sixth sense which attuned them to their quarry's instincts, so that they knew exactly which path to follow and where to stop and change direction. Certainly it would have been impossible to find the gorillas without them.